The Urge to
Surge

(Reprinted from the issue of January 18, 2007)

The Democrats have assumed control of
both houses of Congress, with preposterously exaggerated
celebration of the historic fact that Nancy Pelosi
is the first female speaker of the House. Why this is considered
such a milestone I fail to understand. Its not as if women
in politics were a novelty, as, say, women in pro football would be.
Franklin Roosevelt appointed a woman to his cabinet, and nobody
thought it was terribly remarkable.

The last
time we saw such a silly fuss was in 1984, when Walter Mondale
chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. By a remarkable
coincidence, Ferraro too was a Democrat, Italian, Catholic, and
vociferously pro-abortion.

When was
the last time the media got excited about an anti-abortion
politician? Sometimes politics is almost too depressing to think
about. As President Bush pushes for a surge (the
new word for escalation) in the war in Iraq, the new Democratic
Congress appears disposed to treat him like bad weather 
that is, to complain but not to do anything about him.

Pelosi is
typical: She favors supporting the troops who are
already there while verbally opposing the war. That way Bush gets
all the blame but nothing really changes, nicely setting the stage
for the Democrats in 2008.

There are
no good options in Iraq now, nor even the illusion thereof. Sally
Quinn of The Washington Post argues for an
immediate U.S. withdrawal in a poignant way: She recalls how, as a
little girl, she shared a hospital plane with severely wounded
soldiers from the Korean war: I remember ... the soldiers
screaming in pain and crying out for their mothers.... Many of
them were amputees. Some had no stomachs, some had no
faces.

The
Democrats are also planning a flurry of early legislation 
raising the minimum wage and so forth  so, between them
and Bush, we must not look for smaller government soon.

I do not
think Bush has been the worst American president ever. But he
may prove to be one of the hardest to clean up after.
Say It Again, Sam

It has been nearly a year
since my old friend Sam Francis died, and he is
missed. [Website editors note: It has been nearly two
years. Joe corrects his error in next weeks column.]
Not by everyone, to be sure: One neoconservative crowed that his
death had left this country a better place. Gracious people, those
neocons. But those of us who valued Sams unique eye and
voice will welcome a new collection of his essays, Shots
Fired: Sam Francis on Americas Culture War,
edited by Peter B. Gemma (FGF Books, Vienna, Va.,
www.shotsfired.us; 1-877-SAM-0058). Reading it is like having
Sam back with us for a little while.

The
neocons had plenty of reason to loathe Sam. The feeling was
mutual. Though he was a robust critic of liberalism and was
unsparing of the Clinton administration, these pieces reveal him
as an even more severe critic of the second Bush administration
(not that he much cared for the first) and especially of the
neocon mafia that nestled within it. Sams
way with the sharp phrase is shown by his jab at
neoconservative sex god Irving Kristol. His humor
and insight are here, as well as his vigor and elegance of
expression. I cant resist quoting his sardonic description
of politics as the high art and science of fooling some of
the people some of the time.

Sam was
right early and often. He saw the follies of the Republican Party,
and he saw how it was changing for the worse. He didnt
have to wait for the Iraq war to go bad or for public opinion to
turn against it to tell us what was wrong with it. It had disaster
written all over it, and he wouldnt be at all surprised at
how it has gone over the past year.

But after
all, these are current topics; and Sams purview
wasnt confined to the ephemeral. In this book we also find
the Sam Francis who never shrank from a good cause, even if it
was a lost cause; who could think and write boldly on debates
most people assume were finished long ago: on the Civil War, on
slavery, on Lincoln (whom he sees as essentially a
small-town politico rather than a far-seeing statesman).

Though
such short quotations are fun, they dont convey the
quality of Sams deeper analyses of history and politics. In
these he follows his intellectual hero, James Burnham, a maverick
conservative who has been absurdly called the first
neoconservative. (Burnham would have shared
Sams view of the neocons.)

Sam was
even more pessimistic than his master. History, to his mind, had
no tendency to reach happy endings, and most of the things
others called progress he viewed as ambiguous at
best, degenerate at worst. He was a natural enemy of every form
of official optimism: The final and unpredictable irony of
our history may be that we were more civilized at the beginning of
it than at the end of it. This is the remark of a man who
had thought long and hard about the subject, and who was willing
to think alone.

Sams
essential loneliness (he never married)
was one of the most striking things about him. Even his humor,
which could be uproarious, was never far from gloom. He
didnt expect the truth to be consoling. He sought it
anyway.
Key Words

In The Federalist
Papers, Alexander Hamilton made an
argument for ratifying the Constitution that deserves more
attention. The proposed Constitution, he said, would be superior
to the (unwritten) British constitution in this respect: It would be
unalterable by the government.

A simple
and profound point. In Britain, freedom of speech or habeas
corpus could be abolished by a mere act of Parliament; but here,
so radical a change would have to be made by the people through
the difficult process of amendment. What, after all, would be the
use of a constitution if the government could change it at its own
pleasure?

Worth
thinking about. We lose this advantage, as Jefferson pointed out,
when the government is allowed to define the extent of its own
powers. Which, alas, is what happens whenever the president,
Congress, or the federal judiciary gets away with claiming wider
authority on the pretext that the Constitution is a living
document.

In theory,
We the People, in our Constitution, tell the
government what powers we are delegating to
them. The whole idea is stood on its head, and its purpose
defeated, when the government tells us what its powers are! Why
do we stand for this?



As I
always say, At present, the U.S. Constitution poses no
serious threat to our form of government. Regime Change
Begins at Home  a new selection of my Confessions of a
Reactionary Utopian  will brighten your odd moments.
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